THE SUBSTITUTION OF THE CHRIST-LIFE FOR THE SELF-LIFE

[nChrist]

THE SUBSTITUTION OF THE CHRIST-LIFE FOR THE SELF-LIFE
by F. B. Meyer
1847-1929

Short Bio:  The Rev. Frederick Brotherton Meyer (April 8, 1847 – March 28, 1929) was a contemporary and friend of D. L. Moody. He was a pastor and evangelist in England involved in ministry and inner city mission work on both sides of the Atlantic. He was the author of numerous religious books and articles, and God has used him to help many on a path to Jesus Christ as Lord and Saviour. This material is very old, but it's timeless because God is Glorified, and God is still using it.


In my second address we saw that the will is our main and chief impediment. We are not what we or think, or wish but what we will In the preceding address we saw that our curse lies in making self the pilot of our life, and that the one aim of Christianity is to put Christ where man puts self. I want now to show shortly, concisely, with the power of God's Spirit who cooperates, how this may be done, and I am going to use the Epistle of Galatians.

In Galatians 5:19, we have the works of self: "Adultery, fornication, uncleanness, lasciviousness' idolatry, witchcraft, hatred, variance, emulations, 'wrath, strife, seditions, heresies, envyings, murders, drunkenness, revelings, and such like." Wherever man's nature works itself out, the lust of the flesh shows itself in every casino, saloon and house of ill-fame.

Turn to Galatians 3:3 : "Are ye so foolish? Having begun in the Spirit, are ye now made perfect by the flesh?" Will you be made perfect in the flesh? In the regenerate man, the church-member, there is the same principle of self-life; and though you do not find him in a den of drink or lust or infamy, the same principle which is working unrestrained and unbridled there is working in his heart also. He gives to the collection, to the subscription list, that men may see how much he gives. He seeks to please God by prayer, by the communion, by ritualistic observances. He will even try to be perfect. There is many a man who goes to Keswick and to Northfield, trying to pile up his religions life in the energy of his religious-looking self. But I repeat it: the curse of the Christian and of the world is that self is our pivot; it is because Satan made self his pivot that he became a devil. Take heaven from its center in God, and try to center it in self, and you transform . heaven into hell. I know little or nothing about the fire, or the darkness, or the worm of hell. Hell is selfishness, and selfishness is hell. And is to do away with self, and to make Christ all in all.

When I am dealing with a drunkard I am inclined to say to him:

"Be a man."

What a fool I am! I am trying to cast out the evil of drink by the evil of self-esteem. If I want to save a man, I must cast out the spirit of self, and substitute the Lord Jesus Christ. Alpha, Omega, all in all.

But how? How?

This epistle to the Galatians is my battle-'axe. Luther used it for justification, but I think it is for sanctification.

How? By the cross, and by the cross as presented in the epistle to the Galatians.

The Apostle tells us in Galatians 1:4 : "Jesus Christ, who gave Himself for our sins, that He might deliver us from this present evil world, according to the will of God and our Father." He considers the cross in its aspect toward sanctification. He says: "He delivered us from this present evil world." In Romans we have the cross for justification, the putting away of sin; in Galatians for sanctification, the cross standing between me and my past, between me and the world, between me and myself: the cross, and I count from that cross. That is the ground taken in Galatians.

Take Galatians 2:20 : "I have been crucified with Christ." God demands that every man and woman should unite with the cross, and (so to speak) kill the self, life, the egotism, the personal element which has been so strong in each one. Not your individuality, however. Isaiah will still be Isaiah, and Malachi, Malachi; but the proud, fussy self, esteem, yourself, ego, the flesh, must be crucified. Christ denied His divine self, and you and I must deny our fallen self. Christ's temptation was to use His divine attribute; your temptation is that you should use your human attribute. Yon must put it to the cross, and believe that from this moment it shall be crucified to you and you to it. Barabbas to the cross, to the cross! Christ, come down from the cross and live in here!

Galatians 5:24 : The aorist: "They that are Christ's crucified the flesh." Galatians 6:14 : "God forbid that I should glory save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom the world is crucified unto me, and I unto the world." The world looks at me as a felon, but I have my revenge. That by which I am crucified to the world, by that the world is crucified to me.

It may say what it likes about me.   I retaliate:

"Take it back; it is all true of thyself."

This wonderful epistle speaks of the cross as between me and Egypt, between me and the wilderness, between me and my past, my wanderings; and now the cross is my Jordan by which I pass through death into the land where Joshua leads, the land that flows with milk and honey.

This epistle also treats of the Holy Ghost, because as I have said before, it is only the Holy Spirit that can make your reckoning true. You choose the cross, but the Holy Spirit as it were mortifies, makes dead, makes real. You reckon, He makes real your reckoning. And hence Galatians 5:17 : " The flesh lusteth against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh: and these are contrary the one to the other: so that ye cannot do the things that ye would." Galatians 5:16:

"Walk in the Spirit"; Galatians 5:18 : "Be led of the Spirit"; Galatians 5:25: "Live in the Spirit." And whilst you walk in the Spirit, are led of the Spirit, and live in the Spirit, the Holy Spirit will go on lusting and agonizing and making real to you your reckoning of death.

[nChrist]

THE SUBSTITUTION OF THE CHRIST-LIFE FOR THE SELF-LIFE
by F. B. Meyer
1847-1929

You have not therefore got to worry about the death side; think about the life side. Do not live looking at the corpse, but live looking to the Holy Ghost; and as you trust Him for every movement, as you breathe in the Holy Ghost moment by moment as you breathe in air, in the depth of your heart He will draw you away from the flesh, the self, the world, the devil; and insensibly, unconsciously, exquisitely, He will bring you into life. And the more you live on the life side, the more, without knowing much of it, you will live on the death side; for whilst you are engrossed with the Holy Ghost, the Holy Ghost in the depth of your being is carrying the sentence of death deeper, deeper, deeper down, and things are being mortified of which you once had no conception.

Now listen: If you choose the cross, if you live in the Spirit, the Spirit lusts, (always the present tense), lusteth against the flesh. I do not know how your Bible reads, but some Bibles are printed wrong. "The flesh lusteth against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh," and " Spirit" is spelt with a small s. Take some ink and alter that. It is not "spirit" with a small s; it is " Spirit" with a capital S, the Holy Spirit. "The flesh, the self, lusts against the Holy Spirit, and the Holy Spirit lusts against the flesh."

Now, let us look at five texts in Galatians on the inner life, the indwelling of Christ.

(1.) Galatians 1:15-16 : "When it pleased God,

Who separated me from my mother's womb, and called me by His grace, to reveal His Son in me, that I might preach Him among the heathen; immediately I conferred not with flesh and blood." "It pleased God to reveal His Son in me." Now, " to reveal" means "to undrape." There is a statue. It is covered with a veil. It is there, but hidden. I take off the veil, and you see it. When you were regenerate, Christ came unto you: that is what regeneration means -- Christ born into your spirit. But Christ came in as a veiled figure, and you who are regenerate but who have never seen the Christ as I put Him before you in the last address, you have Christ in you, but, He is veiled. Now, mark. When Jesus died, the veil of the temple was rent in twain from the top to the bottom; and when the soul appreciates the death of Christ as its own death to sin, the veil is rent in twain from the top to the bottom, and the Holy Ghost reveals Jesus as the substitute for the self, life.

"It pleased God to reveal His Son in me." O, my God, I thank Thee that Thou hast revealed Thy Son as the Alpha, the pivot, the fountain, the origin of my life!
May it be so with us all!

A friend of mine was staying near Mont Blanc. He had been there for a fortnight, but had not seen the "monarch of the Alps," Nearly out of heart with waiting, he was preparing to leave. Going up to dress for dinner, he passed a window and saw that the monarch was still veiled in mist. Having dressed, he came down stairs, passing the window again. Every vestige of mist had now parted, and Mont Blanc stood revealed from base to snow clad peak. So now there shall come upon you a breath of the Holy Ghost, before which the misconception of your life shall pass, and to you God will reveal His Son in you as the center of your life.

Turn for a moment to Colossians 1:27, a very favorite passage- "To whom God would make known what is the riches of the glory of this mystery among the Gentiles; which is Christ in you, the hope of glory."

A woman sits alone. Her son ran away to sea twenty years ago. She is a widow, poor, lonely. A bronzed stranger comes.

"Can I sleep in your spare room?"

"I have a room to let, so you can stay."

He comes in disguised, so that she cannot see him.

He is there, but she knows him not. One day they sit together at dinner, and there is a gesture, and she says:

"John!"

That is the glory of the mystery when the two kiss.

"My boy!"

"My mother!"

Then after dinner he says: "Mother, you shall never lack again, Here is gold. I am going to live with you, never to go away again."

That is the riches of the glory of the mystery of her boy in the house.

Jesus, come! You have come, but You are a mystery. But we have come to the cross, and the mystery is gone, and there is the glory of the day; but there will be the riches of the glory of the mystery, Christ in us; and He will do for us better than ever we could have done for ourselves.

[nChrist]

THE SUBSTITUTION OF THE CHRIST-LIFE FOR THE SELF-LIFE
by F. B. Meyer
1847-1929

(2.) Galatians 1:24: "They glorified God in me."

Some young men belonging to the Salvation Army came to old Andrew Bonar, and they said:

"Dr. Bonar, we have been" all night with God. Can't you see our faces shine?"
The old man said: "Moses wist not that his face shone," When you have got the real article you do not need to advertise it, the public will come for it; but the man who has got what we call in England, Brummagem ware, a sham, must puff it. If you have got Christ in you, people will not glorify you, they will glorify Christ in you, and they will say: "Teach us about Christ who has made you so fair."

"They glorified God in me." Dear brother ministers, when you get this, they will not glorify your sermons, they will not glorify your intellect, and they will not glorify your eloquence; but they will glorify God who shines through you as the Shekinah shone through the temple of old.

(3.) Galatians 2:8 : "The same was mighty in me."

Hudson Taylor told me that on the threshhold of his great life work God came to him and said:

"My child, I am going to evangelize inland China, and if you like to walk with me I will do it through you."

"Mighty in me." I cannot take that Bible class, but Christ is in me, and HE can. I cannot conduct that mission, but Christ is in me, and HE can. I cannot assume these responsibilities, but hallelujah! it does not matter. A copper wire has only to convey the message, it is for the battery to send it; and you may be forever more like the wire which connects you with cities far down its course, the wire along which the fair and the false passes without fret, without anxiety, without care, a mighty, mighty force meeting in the wire. When it is not self but Christ, it is Christ "mighty in me."

(4.) Galatians 2:20 : "Christ liveth in me."

One day when traveling by train, a young man sat opposite me in the car, reading Thomas a Kempis' "Imitation of Christ." I knew the book, and sat beside him and said:

"A grand book."

He said: "Yes."

Said I: "I have found something better." "Better?"

"Yes."

"How?"

"Better for me, because I was always a poor hand at imitation. I imitated the minister with whom I settled from college, and nobody but myself and my wife ever guessed that my sermons were imitations of his. When I was a boy, my father had me taught drawing, and my master put before me something, and my copy needed to have letterpress underneath to state it was an imitation of the copy. And when I sat down to imitate Christ, no one could have guessed what I was trying to attain. But," said I, "my young friend, if my drawing-master could have infused the spirit of his skill into my brain and hand, he could have drawn through me as fair a drawing as his own; and if my great and noble friend could have only put his spirit into me, why should I not have spoken even as he? And if instead of imitating Christ far away in the glory, He will come by the Holy Ghost and dwell in me, by His grace He shall work through my poor yielded life, a life something like His own fair life." Christ liveth in me.

Many have no idea what religion is. Religion, religo, a Latin word meaning "I bind," -- it is the binding of the heart to the Lord. No, I recall that; it is better: "He that is joined to the Lord is one spirit." O Christ, Thou art one with me, to make me one with Thee world without end!

(5) One verse more. Galatians 4:19:

"My little children, of whom I travail in birth again until Christ be formed in you." You know, of course, that an egg has in it a little embryo of life, and the nutriment, the viscous fluid upon which it shall grow; and every day the little life germ pecks into this more and more, and the chick is formed in the shell. Until now there has been a good deal more of other elements in your life than of Christ, but from now the Christ is going to grow and increase and absorb into Himself everything else, and be formed in you.

Brother ministers, will you forgive that I have stated the truths of Christ's holy gospel so imperfectly? How can human words tell what Christ is prepared to be? But let me entreat you to pass by a great deal of political life, and it may be, (though it is not wrong), of the social life around you; and I charge you to live to preach the deep philosophy of the indwelling Christ, and let men know what Jesus meant when He said:

"In that day ye shall know that I am in the Father, and ye in me, and I in you."